Older Kids May Transmit COVID-19 as Much as Adults Do, New Evidence Shows Part 1

新证据表明,年龄较大的孩子可能会像成年人一样传播新冠肺炎(上)

Since the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, scientists and health authorities have often observed that children do not appear to contract and transmit the virus to the same extent as adults.

自从新冠病毒大流行爆发以来,科学家和卫生当局常观察到儿童似乎没有像成年人那样感染和传播病毒。

While the mechanisms behind this reduced vulnerability have remained somewhat mysterious and speculative, new evidence from South Korea shows that the age of children is also a vital factor to consider, with a large study indicating that older children seem to spread coronavirus on par with adults, even if younger children do not.

虽然这种易感染性降低背后的机制仍然有些神秘,备受猜测,但来自韩国的新证据表明,儿童的年龄也是一个需要考虑的重要因素。一项大型研究表明,年龄较大的儿童似乎与成年人一样传播冠状病毒,而年龄较小的儿童并非如此。

A research team led by preventive medicine physician Young Joon Park from the Korea Centres for Disease Control and Prevention examined South Korean contact tracing reports from when the first case of COVID-19 was identified in the country on January 20, up until March 27.

由韩国疾病控制和预防中心的预防医学医生Young Joon Park领导的一个研究小组对韩国从1月20日发现首例新冠肺炎病例到3月27日的接触者追踪报告进行了检查。

During this window, 5,706 index patients were identified, meaning confirmed cases who were the first people identified as having COVID-19 in an investigated cluster or setting.

在这段时间内,研究人员确定了5706名指示病例,这意味着确诊的病例是第一批被确认为在调查的集群或环境中患有新冠肺炎的人。

Contact tracing efforts chased up and tested 59,073 people who had contact with these confirmed cases, and it showed that, as expected, people living in the same household as an infected person are the most likely to get the virus.

接触者追踪工作追查并检测了59073名与这些确诊病例有过接触的人,结果显示,正如预期的那样,与感染者住在同一个家庭的人最有可能感染病毒。

Among 10,592 of these household contacts tested in the study, 11.8 percent of people ended up also having COVID-19, whereas just 1.9 percent of non-household contacts (48,481 individuals all up) had the virus.

在研究测试的10592名家庭接触者中,11.8%的人最终也感染了新冠肺炎,与之相比只有1.9%的非家庭接触者(总数共48481人)感染了新冠肺炎。

"Higher household than non-household detection might partly reflect transmission during social distancing, when family members largely stayed home except to perform essential tasks, possibly creating spread within the household," the researchers explain in their study, which is in early release.

研究人员在他们的研究中解释说:“家庭比非家庭的病毒感染率更高,这可能在一定程度上反映了保持社交距离期间的病毒传播。这段时间,家庭成员除了进行基本活动外,大部分时间都呆在家里,可能造成了家庭内部的传播。”这项研究现已提前发布。

翻译:MS小冰晶